The perfect holiday let for Jane Austen fans

Just beyond a 400-year-old sweet chestnut tree, its bark twirled into football-sized knots, Francis Plumptre stops and points to a neat path cut through the forest foliage. The scene, all lacy cow-parsley, tangles of blackberry flowers and glistening green leaves, is quintessentially English and romantic – and even more so when one discovers it was one of Jane Austen’s favourite places to walk.

We are in the grounds of Goodnestone House in deep, rural Kent. “Jane’s brother, Edward, had married Elizabeth Bridges, whose father was Sir Brook Bridges, the 3rd Baronet and owner of Goodnestone,” Plumptre explains, “and so she’d often walk back here with them from their marital home in Rowley”. It was her brother’s wedding at this church, on the same day that his bride’s sister Sophia married William Deedes, he explains, that inspired the double wedding scene in Pride and Prejudice, which she started to write after a six-week visit to her brother in 1796, and it was Edward’s daughter Fanny who was thought to have been the model for the character of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park.

"The scene, all lacy cow-parsley, tangles of blackberry flowers and glistening green leaves, is quintessentially English and romantic"

Visits to Goodnestone also provided the opportunity for Austen to mingle with the socially elevated company that she wrote about so incisively in her novels.

"The grand house, sleeping 24, can now be rented as a smart holiday bolt-hole"

Even without the direct Austen connection, Goodnestone would make an ideal set for an Austen adaptation. The house, originally built in 1704 and expanded in the 1840s, is three-storey Queen Anne, with handsome Georgian features on one side and a grand Victorian Palladian-style portico on the other. Views from the drawing room extend over a formal lavender-filled parterre and a haha leading to rolling parkland. There’s a cricket pitch and a quaint pavilion over which roses spill; an arboretum with giant Cedars of Lebanon; lawns on which to play croquet and one of the largest and most beautiful walled gardens in southern England. From this week, following a £2.5 million restoration, the grand house, sleeping 24, can now be rented as a smart holiday bolt-hole.

A bathroom at Goodnestone House

When the current owner, Julian, the 22nd Lord Fitzwalter and the elder brother of Francis Plumptre, inherited the 2,000-acre estate after the death of his mother, Margaret (the sister of the former editor of The Daily Telegraph, Bill Deedes), it was in a state of total disrepair (“as children, for a treat, we’d be taken away from here to a tiny caravan in the Lake District,” he remarks wryly). Some rooms were floored in lino, the kitchen was dank and piled with old belongings – and although there were 15 bedrooms, the house had just three bathrooms.

Now, Lord Fitzwalter and his wife Sally have transformed it. Once they’d installed new plumbing, electrics, 105 additional radiators and Wi-Fi — and restored the oak floorboards and antiques — family portraits dating back to the first Earl of Sussex were rehung, and Farrow & Ball paints, Colefax and Fowler silk curtains and hand-painted de Gournay wallpaper deployed to create gracious, light interiors. There are now 11 bathrooms and 12 bedrooms, named after family members, a library filled with leather-bound books, and grand living spaces. The feel is of a five-star hotel – with Italian linens, OKA kitchenware and Burlington bathrooms – but with the benefits of a garden full of raspberries and vegetables to pick, rooms equipped with Roberts radios and Sonos music systems, and a concierge service to arrange staff and meals on request. Deliveries of groceries can be organised and you can even call on chefs from Rocksalt, the sensational Folkstone restaurant, to produce feasts of lobster, herb-fed Romney lamb and hay-baked Canterbury soft cheese.

Guests can enjoy private access to the estateCredit:
Marianne Majerus

The biggest treat of all when staying here, though, is having private access to the estate and three acres of flower-filled walled formal gardens, often described as “Sissinghurst without the crowds”. When I stayed, I pulled back my silk curtains to be greeted by mooing cows, cooing turtle doves, and wafts of country air fragrant with mown grass and roses. Tripping down the grand staircase, I could see why Jane Austen might have written “I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve” after a trip to Goodnestone. Being the Lady of the House – even for a short time – made me wonderfully content.

Goodnestone House costs from £2,900 for three nights for 10 people; there are extra charges if meals and other additional services are required (01227 806 987; goodnestone.com).

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